Surprising Information about Alcohol Consumption You Need to Hear

In this episode, Dr. Rodney and Karen tackle a difficult topic about the impact of alcohol your body and particularly your brain.

New research shows that alcohol disrupts your gut health because it kills beneficial bacteria, potentially causing leaky gut syndrome and triggering inflammatory responses that affect your liver and brain

This is of particular concern to women because regular alcohol consumption can alter hormonal balance, increase estrogen levels and potentially raise cancer risk, especially for breast cancer

Unfortunately, even low levels of alcohol consumption can have a negative impact on brain structure by reducing overall brain volume and can affect the integrity of gray and white matter

You may be saying to yourself that people drink alcohol and seem to still live to a ripe old age. Keep in mind that in the Blue Zones those referenced grow their own grapes, make their own wine and make a small glass of wine part of their social tapestry. All of these are factors as you give yourself a gut check.

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Transcript

Dr. Rodney: Welcome to Stance for Health podcast with Doctor Rodney and Karen Wirth, where becoming healthy is not complicated. Control your health by focusing on six areas of life that we teach you so you finally have the energy you want, have to do what you want, instead of being a victim of your age. I have over 20 years experience working as a chiropractor and Karen is an author, speaker and longevity coach. We've seen how a tiny change in your habits today can open up your life to a powerful future. Start today and take your stance for health.

Karen: Welcome to stance four Health. This is the hope lady, Karen. Sebastian Wirth, and I am here with Doctor Rodney.

Dr. Rodney: Hello.

Karen: We're talking about a somewhat controversial subject. Tell us what's on your mind, doc.

Dr. Rodney: Well, the thought occurred to me since, say, last week we had a airline pilot come in and he's been piloting different kinds of planes, but mostly fighter jets, F DC series, like the kinds of things that you see in a commercial aircraft. Right. He's been doing it for 40 years. And the thought that came to mind was, how do I approach something like that, where someone get them to think of how they're in control of their own health? And what would someone like that be willing to allow? Or what would the law allow for him to have alcohol or what's his physical fitness level have to be in order to be behind the, you know, the controls of an airline with 200 people sitting behind you? And so then I thought, well, that really applies to all of us, doesn't it? It does, yeah. What are we willing to accept versus what kind of a parameter is put in front of us that's legally allowed? And so it made me think, well, that could be harmful to others, but the reality is it's harmful to ourselves.

Karen: You know, that's such a good point. I remember when, as a corporate trainer, that we talked about having a bad day at work, and if you're a brain surgeon, you don't want to be the recipient, the patient, if they're having a bad day or you're on a plane.

Dr. Rodney: Yes.

Karen: Wow, that, that's really thought provoking.

Dr. Rodney: And it is a little bit different in that I don't know the full details. I'm sure that this pilot would be willing to let me know. I just think that there's an autopilot component that might be different than a surgeon would have to. I mean, you can't go on autopilot as a surgeon.

Karen: Well, that's true.

Dr. Rodney: I'm just, I'm just saying, the point.

Karen: Is that we have made it pretty common that I'm having a bad day, just put up with me, or I'm going to eat or drink whatever I want and I'll be okay. I mean, everybody does it. It's sort of a mentality, a downstream mentality of thinking, well, I don't want to be too extreme. Everybody else is eating, drinking and marrying, not getting married, but merry. And so why should I even worry about all this?

Dr. Rodney: It is such a good question. And it's really been gnawing at me lately, mostly because I'm thinking, well, wine on Shabbat, you know, there's other people in other countries that are drinking wine at five and they're living into their hundreds. And I, you know, what's, what's the difference between what they're doing on a regular basis and what the research lately shows is healthy or unhealthy on a regular basis here in the United States, and why, what are some of the other things that we could compare it to that a lot of other people in other countries that are living super long, what we have affectionately called in other podcasts as the blue zones, and that are actually called that because of Buettner's work, Dan Buettner's work. But that being said, are there any things that come, is there anything that comes to mind immediately about the things that I said about alcohol in particular?

Karen: Well, before we jump on that particular topic, it seems to me like, as we're looking at the world, that we are living in one of the least healthy countries in the world.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

Karen: And we should be one of the healthiest because we spend more on medical than anywhere else. But at the same time, so much of it is source.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

Karen: And so, and I look at that.

Dr. Rodney: And it's a rabbit trail. But I, but I love rabbit trails. Karen asked a great question. One of the reasons why we, she said we should, because we spend so much money on healthcare. But are we spending money on healthcare or are we spending money on disease care? Disease care, which is another way of saying trauma care or end of life triage care or end of life care. In other words, it's your health span versus your lifespan.

Karen: Oh, I love that. Yes.

Dr. Rodney: Right.

Karen: That's a topic that we've talked about before.

Dr. Rodney: What are some of the, these are, these are some of the things that are early indicators or early causes of what gets you there early.

Karen: Yes. And so putting that to rest in a sense, that unless you are in a blue zone where they've brewed the grapes, stumped them and made their organic wine.

Dr. Rodney: So all the work it takes to get it there. Yeah. You don't just pick up a bottle from the liquor store and take it home and sit down and drink it, if I may say. Kind of a spoiler alert. Full of sulfites.

Karen: Exactly.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

Karen: So, yeah, I think that we're on to something that each person needs to make a conscious decision, but a knowledgeable decision, because we have been lulled into just an acceptance of, you know, this is what you want to do. Paul says, drink some wine for your stomach's sake. Are we talking the same wine? I mean, we're going down another rabbit.

Dr. Rodney: That's fine. And it's. Haven't done the research, quite honestly. But I have to think that it's not necessarily the same level of alcohol.

Karen: That's another point.

Dr. Rodney: And alcohol is alcohol. Well, not necessarily. Not when it's triple what some of these natural wines are. And I would have to consider some of the natural wine that you're talking about in these blue zones that we've considered today. Probably half of the. Of the alcohol I've seen it, I've actually picked up the bottles. They don't have as much alcohol in them. So, interesting start.

Karen: Did you want to look at some of the research as to why you want to reconsider any amount of alcohol?

Dr. Rodney: So the way I wanted to couch this was, I did a little bit of a teaser on Instagram that said how many people, I was out by the street, and I was posing the question, how many of these people that are speaking of people that could be harming others? How many people are out there driving right now under the influence, you know, and not necessarily alcohol, but what about, you know, how, as it becomes, unfortunately, more accepted in certain states and parts of the country, marijuana, however, we're talking about general toxicity and things that will cut your life short, and alcohol is one of them. And it's always been kind of this almost like a sacred cow in some circles because it's such a social lubricant. And we say, well, look at the so and so. Lived to be 120, and she was drinking a shot of whiskey every day or a glass of whiskey every day. Well, there might have been other things that she did to contribute her longevity that you're not doing. I'm speaking to myself here. I sit down more than I should at times. I don't exercise as consistently as I should. But you know what? That's changing, because it's podcasts like this that stir me up and get me right back on the. On the saddle.

Karen: And I think that that's where we make those personal decision that if you're thinking about what the most recent research is saying is that even low levels of alcohol consumption impact your brain structure and reduce the volume and affect the gray and white matter integrity. So that's really important.

Dr. Rodney: And what's interesting about that is that you're going to. Spoiler alert. If you do something to the gut, you do it by consequence because of blood flow. And the way that the blood brain barrier is set up and the gut blood barrier is set up, you do by consequence to either or. So if you get a concussion, you affect your gut blood barrier. And if you, if you increase your intestinal permeability or change your gut lining or you change the, the bacteria, bacteria contents kill off some of the good guys, you're going to affect your brain chemistry. Is that what we're saying here?

Karen: Yeah, because actually consuming alcohol disrupts the beneficial bacteria in the gut and it triggers inflammatory responses that affect your liver and your brain. We're familiar with the liver part, but that's the reality of the fact that those two, like you said, very well said, are so connected.

Dr. Rodney: Here's the thing. A lot of us, what I, the way I was trying to catch that earlier is if I don't get behind the wheel when I'm drunk or affected or under the influence, then I'm not hurting anybody. Well, you are hurting yourself, and you are tagging two or three people or more around you for helping you later because of the increased risk of disease, you're making other people work for you. That's how I've had to look at this. It's a little bit like somebody on the battlefield, you know, enemies don't necessarily want to kill you because once you're dead, you're dead, you don't require any help. But if you are injured, it takes a chain of people, the medic, you got, the surgeon, you got this, that you got four or five different people helping that injured soldier. That's kind of the same thing here. We're talking about country of sick people making themselves sicker and taking then triage care toward what they consider to be healthcare, spending lots of money, and we're not getting our money's worth because it's nothing, the same kind of care, and we're not talking about this kind of stuff. And we need to.

Karen: And the reason we're not talking about it is because it's not popular. It's not what people want to hear. We've already talked about the fact of my addiction. Now, alcohol has never been an issue for me because very young, I saw my mom's brother, my uncle, a raging alcoholic, angry and scary. And as a child, I said, okay, if there's any chance that I have a genetic predisposition, any whatsoever, I'm not going to touch the stuff. Plus, when I went to smell it, it stunk. And I thought, why would I develop a taste for that? Because it's, and it's damaging your cells indiscriminately, and that can lead to various health issues, including cancer risk.

Dr. Rodney: So this is the funny thing. I had a can. I won't call it necessarily a cancer scare, but I had a cancer wake up call.

Karen: Yes.

Dr. Rodney: Four years ago. Had three quarters of my eyelid taken off, and nothing was every, just everything I did naturally, it was just like, bouncing off of it.

Karen: Yeah. Lots of supplements. Some were not against supplements.

Dr. Rodney: Hundreds of dollars worth of supplements should have been. It should have been moving the needle, but didn't.

Karen: Why?

Dr. Rodney: I later found out at a seminar that because I was drinking beer, beer has. If you're familiar with the Warburg effect, let me just tell you what the Warburg effect is. The Warburg effect is sugar feeds cancer, and maltose is a very nice, particular kind of sugar that's set up perfectly, that when you break it up into its parts, it becomes sugar. So basically, what I was doing is alcohol and sugar by drinking beer regularly, maybe three different authors that I respect, and this probably the same reports and the same are saying the same thing about wine.

Karen: Yeah.

Dr. Rodney: Okay. And not to even speak of the hard stuff, as some people like to say, the good stuff in the form of, like, your whiskeys and things like that, the higher alcohol content stuff. But this right here, homocysteine, is one of the things that increases your risk of heart attack. The sugars increase your risk of cancer. All of this same, most of the same substances, in essence, that you find in wine are, in essence, when you boil it down, are also in wine. Is there anything I can do to test it or to mitigate the effect now that I've done it and I want to quit, but I'm just going to have to slowly quit. You can quit cold turkey if you want to. Does the article mention anything that can help mitigate it?

Karen: Well, it does say that there are certain supplements, and we'll put them in the notes.

Dr. Rodney: Okay, good.

Karen: That help to mitigate some of the harmful effects that NAc. And you'll have to help me with the pronunciation of that one. It's called Nac supplementation. So this is an interesting thing because it starts as an n dash and then it has the same type of almost Spelling.

Dr. Rodney: Interesting.

Karen: But it's cysteine n acetylcysteine. Mm hmm.

Dr. Rodney: Okay, well, one is good for you and the other one's not so good for you.

Karen: And so when you look at that, I think it's being aware. And first of all, if it is something that is a problem, because we're really talking to people here that are saying, well, I, yeah, I do it.

Dr. Rodney: Socially or with, I drink once a.

Karen: Week, something like that. There is something you can do to mitigate the damage. And the other thing is that you need to become more aware and do your own research. We can, we can give you, if you're interested to say research, and we can send you some of the links that we've been doing. Because basic nutrition is important. I think it's so important that if you are drinking a Glass of wine like the blue zone, folks, is to have it small glass with a meal and in a social setting and balancing all of that out.

Dr. Rodney: Yeah. And if you can't do that, help some, get somebody to ask you, do you think I have a problem with alcohol?

Karen: Yeah.

Dr. Rodney: And if they, if they kind of go, hmm, you know, if they kind of hem and haw, and maybe you do, this is a good time to get a gut check and ask yourself if it's really worth it.

Karen: Yeah. Because we are establishing what our future will be today. I'm determining what my future will be. If that's sitting too much, I'm getting up, I'm moving. If that's the motion that, that helps me, if it's nutrition, eating the right things, these are all things that we want to encourage you, not condemn you, but encourage you to take more of these steps so that along with us, you can take your stance for health.

Dr. Rodney: For health. Thanks for listening. Thank you for joining us at Stance for Health podcast, where getting healthy and staying that way are not as complicated as you might think. Subscribe now and discover steps and small changes that can increase your energy and open the door to vibrant health and longevity. If this podcast has been helpful, please write a review. We'll see you next time.